Mr. Magazine

Those who know me, they know that my entire career and profession started at age 10 when the first issue of the Arabic Superman was published in my original home country Lebanon in February of 1964.  It was the beginning of a love affair with storytelling, heroes and villains, ink on paper, comics and magazines. 63 years later that love affair continues with no let down or a break.

This love affair left a soft spot in my heart for comics until this day. So, when I heard about the launch of Comics! The Magazine I felt that all my dreams have come true, comics, magazines, and ink on paper.  Mr. Magazine™ could not ask for any better.  I acquired every issue since its launch earlier this year and three of the secret variant covers of issues 1, 2, and 4 at a price that will go unmentioned for fear in getting in trouble with the family.

My affair did not end there, I needed to know the folks behind the magazine and why someone will publish such a great magazine in this digital age?  I reached out to Joe Keatinge, the editor-in-chief of the magazine and Atom! Freeman, the publisher and had one of most delightful interviews in my career.  It brought back memories of a pleasant childhood and a firm belief in the future of magazines, as in ink on paper.

So, without any further ado, please enjoy those two lightly edited interviews with the editor-in-chief and the publisher of Comics! The Magazine:

But first the soundbites of the interview with Joe Keatinge, editor-in-chief, Comics! The Magazine:

On the need for Comics! The Magazine: “It’s time that there’s a platform for comics that speaks to that level of enthusiasm is the operative word, but also confidence too.”

On the intended audience: “The younger generation is tired of the Internet. I don’t know how close you follow print sales in the comics industry, stores are reporting up to 30 to 40 percent year over year. And that last year was 20 to 30 percent. The people coming in are like 20 years old.”

On the secret variant covers: “There’s a secret cover program and we don’t do it every issue. We like to keep people on their toes.”

On his mission for the magazine: “My mission, personally, with the magazine, again, is what I said earlier: Is to get people enthusiastic about comics. And so with the variant covers, it’s great. They’re selling high.”

On the connectivity between human and paper: “So when you’re a kid and you’re reading Superman, and it’s on paper, and it’s yours, and it’s in your hand, and you’re reading the story, I would assume that there’s a higher level of connection there.”

On the magazine’s goal: “To be of greater service to this industry and become an essential part about how people learn about comics.”

On his future vision for the magazine: “Is that we help inspire people to make great comics. And read great comics, of course. I want people to read it and think, I could do that. Then, they think they can do that and they work really hard and talk about the fight we mentioned earlier. It doesn’t work out. And then it does work out. They keep going and they keep getting better and better and better. And one day, they’re so good, they’re so undeniable, we profile them on the cover.”

On how people decide to buy a comic book: “Atom! (the publisher) did some research a while ago and found that 82% of customers, at comic bookstores, made decisions of what to buy in the store.”

And now the soundbites of the interview with Atom! Freeman, publisher, Comics! The Magazine:

On the magazines mission: “From a business standpoint, it is a platform. From a consumer standpoint, it is just a celebration and a guide for the world of comics.”

On a major challenge: “But print advertising budgets are not something they’ve been doing for a while. Convincing them to make that room or to take away from something else in order to get involved early, that was a challenge early on.”

On another major challenge: “But as a result of that, really our biggest challenge right now is what do we do next? How do we keep the magazine itself exciting? How do we build off of the success of the magazine? Those are the bigger questions that Joe and I spend a lot of time talking about.”

On the high selling price of variant covers: “It takes a lot to really surprise me. I was pleasantly taken aback by the values.”

On the magazine’s digital future: “While we’ve discussed what it would look like to make Comics! The Magazine digital, I think that so far, everything we’ve heard would just be diminishing of the print version.”

On the value of print: “We’re able to have more complex conversations because you’re going to sit and digest it in a way that you don’t, anything that’s on a screen.”

On the future of magazines: “I do think that magazines are going to have a comeback. What we’re seeing in print in comics and magazine right now, I expect to see all over the place.”

More on the value of print: “One of the things that happens in our world is any comic that is on a digital platform ends up on a piracy site. And Comics! The Magazine is on no piracy sites right now.”

And now for the lightly edited interviews with Joe Keatinge, editor-in-chief and Atom! Freeman, publisher, Comics! The Magazine:

Samir Husni: My first question to you is, you said in your last editorial, I love fighters. I love people with vision. Tell me about your fight and your vision with Comics! the Magazine.

Joe Keatinge: Sure. I really appreciate that. I would say the fight or the mission with the magazine is really simple. It’s just to get people genuinely enthusiastic about comics, and that can be genuinely enthusiastic about reading comics.

There’s enough in the world about how everything’s horrible, and that’s just not what we do here.

We are celebrating this art form to the highest degree. Bringing in people that have same sort of mentality, different voices, of course. It’s to spread that genuine enthusiasm for the art form.

Art form that’s fueling not just comics, but television and film and video games. It’s time that there’s a platform for comics that speaks to that level of enthusiasm is the operative word, but also confidence too.

Samir Husni: Why did you decide to do it in print in this digital age?

Joe Keatinge: That’s a great question. It’s something we talked about a lot. It’s because there’s so much digital’s gotten through so much noise. If I live a busy life and I have 10 minutes to determine what comics are out there, you go online and you search comics, there’s a lot of different sources.

A lot of them are skewing negative. So there’s that. The other aspect of it is there’s a new generation coming in and they want physical media.

The younger generation is tired of the Internet. I don’t know how close you follow print sales in the comics industry, stores are reporting up to 30 to 40 percent year over year. And that last year was 20 to 30 percent.

The people coming in are like 20 years old. And it’s two things. One is they’re raised on comics.

They were raised on comics by people like Raina Telgemeier or Jeff Smith or Dave Pelkey. They went in their teen years and they got manga from libraries. Now thanks to there’s a book called Absolute Batman, which is The Book.

It’s the top book in the industry by a huge margin. That’s the new readership. These people who were kids 10 years ago, but now they’re 20 and they have disposable income are interested in this. So they have that education with comics, but also they saw the fruit of the generation that is so digitally focused and living lives online and consuming digital media.

I’m not against the Internet. I mean, that’s how you and I are talking.

There’s a huge great net benefit to it. But you got to be careful in terms of how much you like moderation, essentially.

So I think people really want things like this is 32 pages. It’s now going to be 40 pages. We’re increasing the page count by signature.

You can read it in 10, 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes, maybe a little longer, depending on the issue. You can know everything you need to know to go to the comic bookstore.

Samir Husni: I noticed that with some issues, you have two different covers. You have a regular cover and you have a variant cover, which is selling for up to like 150 dollars on eBay.

Joe Keatinge:  We’re experimenting a lot because it’s been a while since there’s been a comics magazine. We’re not the only one. There are other ones.

There’s one called Dummy and there’s one called American Nature. There’s one kind of a comic staple. So, we’re not the only one, but we’re the only one doing it our way.

Part of that is what can we do in print? That’s fun and unexpected. You can’t do in digital.

We were at a comic book trade show, Comics Pro, and coincidentally, it was when we got our first issue comps. We did an early edition of the first issue. An Absolute Batman cover.

I was sitting there and I knew that we did bundles of about 25. And I was thinking you could put anything in these bundles. Because, when the stores receive the bundles, they just have to scan in the initial receiving the UPC of the bundle itself. And then the individual UPCs of the covers so that we can sneak in something really cool. And so I contacted Skybound, the company that created Invincible and The Walking Dead. They do surprise better than anybody else in the industry right now. I knew they would get it. I contacted them and said you got this great book called Terminal coming out. Robert Kirkman, Joe Casey, Art Adams, Dave Finch, Andy Kubert, like all- star team. I was like, what if because we were already planning to do a Battle Beast cover with them, what if we did a secret Terminal cover? We don’t announce it. And it gets in there. And then that sold really well. Then we just did a cover. So, we did a feature in the new issue with Mark Spears, the artist behind a series called Monster Monsters. He is doing a new Spawn book.  Spawn, one of the most popular comics in the last 30 years. He actually suggested it.  I’ll give Mark full credit.

He suggested what if we do a secret Spawn cover? I thought that would light the world on fire. If Todd McFarlane would approve it, that’d be great. And he did.

There’s a secret cover program and we don’t do it every issue. We like to keep people on their toes.

We also do variant covers with different partners. Sometimes it’s a store. We’ll want to do a variant cover with an artist whom we have relationship with.

With number five, we’re doing covers with Alex Ross. So we have an Alex Ross interview in there. The opportunity came because of that interview. To do a variant cover with him that he will be given out at his booth at San Diego Comic Con. Mad Cave Studios, another publisher. They’re doing a similar thing.

They have a book coming out with John Cusack, the actor. And again, they thought, hey, can we do a variant cover of this? We don’t do pay to play. As the editor, I don’t care what advertisers we have.

It doesn’t affect in terms of content. Obviously, we love our advertisers, and they make the magazine possible. But in terms of content, it’s what’s interesting, period.

If it’s not interesting, they can’t pay enough money to be in there. But it just worked out. Alex Ross is one of the greatest artists of all time.

I’d want to talk to him. And then this opportunity came to do the cover. Great. Same with John Cusack. That’s interesting. He wants to make comics.

Why? If there was a compelling story there, and there was, great. So any opportunity to do something interesting in print.

I think you’ll appreciate this. It feels like there is a re-education going on. Which is funny, because we work in a print industry.

But in terms of having a promotional venture in print, there’s a lot of re-education. And a lot of like, you can do things differently than you were doing them digitally. Actually, I will even go further and say, a level of freedom.

This is going off on a tangent here. We serialized a comic book called Chew. Chew was by Rob Guillory and John Layman.

One of the major hits of the 2010s. And we were talking with them about doing a new comic. And they agreed to do a new Chew, which is a big deal.

And at first, it starts off as, from the get-go, now that I think about it. They have been doing things you really can only do, storytelling-wise. Because it’s a single page every issue, is Chew.

Just one page. The things that they were storytelling are so interesting. Like the first ever edition looked like it was just an ad.

Then in the second issue, well it turns out that ad is part of the story. Why is it? What’s going on there? And then John Layman, the writer, just sent me scripts for issues 9 and 10. And he is doing, again, it only makes sense in print.

The advertisers really get it. We work with a company, one of their advertisers is a company called Oni Press. And they run ads for, it looks like it’s an ad for another product.

Like a liquor ad that takes place in the world of the comic. It only makes sense. It only makes sense in print. If you ran it online, it wouldn’t work as well. They really understood how we can utilize print to tell a different story than we would be able to if it was just like an Instagram ad even.

Samir Husni: What do you think about those variant covers demanding high prices on eBay and are selling much, much more than the regular $2.99 cover price of the magazine?

Joe Keatinge: Well, you have to understand the perspective of the person you’re asking.

Because I’m the editor-in-chief, right? And so, you might get a different answer from our publisher. You might get a different answer from the ad sales guy. My mission, personally, with the magazine, again, is what I said earlier.

Is to get people enthusiastic about comics. And so with the variant covers, it’s great. They’re selling high. It seems like higher every time we do it. But to me, what that metric really… Because that’s data, right? And the data, to me, says people are excited about this. People want… We put the variant covers out in the marketplace and the marketplace dictated the value of it.

And the value of especially that Spawn cover is, again, upwards of $130.  We did a giveaway. We gave it away for free at a convention. A number zero issue. That was something we handed out. And now it goes for $80 to $100. You know what I mean?

What I love about your story is you were a kid when you first saw that Superman. It was this relationship between reader and the magazine. There was nothing else in that world. There was nothing else distracting you. But I assume that there’s ads in there, you know. But otherwise, it’s the experience between reader and story. There’s no other noise.

There’s a lot of great digital ventures. I’m not discounting them. Like, obviously, Webtoon. Webcomics in general have been going strong.

A lot of the comics I cited earlier, like Raina Telgemeier’s work and a lot of her contemporaries had webcomics. But there’s just something about the relationship between the reader and print.

It may be biological as well. I read a report a long time ago about the data retention you have reading print versus digital. This is purely hypothetical. I don’t know this for sure. But I wonder, too, when you’re reading a fictional story, if there’s a level of empathy you have when you read print versus digital. So, when you’re a kid and you’re reading Superman, and it’s on paper, and it’s yours, and it’s in your hand, and you’re reading the story, I would assume that there’s a higher level of connection there.

Samir Husni: I noticed in some of the issues you have DC on the cover, and some issues you don’t have DC on the cover. So how do you that?

Joe Keatinge: That’s part of the arrangement we have when we utilize their covers and characters. You know, DC is not the publisher of the magazine.

But it’s just how they protect their copyright of their characters. As simple as that. It’s just like other licenses they do; it’s the same arrangement.

Samir Husni: If you and I are having this discussion a year from now, what would you tell me Joe accomplished in this year, in 26 – 27?

Joe Keatinge: That’s an excellent question. I just want to be of service to this industry, you know, and I think I can speak for myself and my business partners, Atom! Freeman, Rico Renzi, and Gabe Yocum.

We’ve got a good team. And I do feel that we’re all unified. Atom! did some research a while ago and found that 82% of customers, at comic bookstores, made decisions of what to buy in the store. Not influenced by the internet, not influenced by anything else. And that’s why Comics! The Magazine, at this current state, is exclusively through comic bookstores. Because it’s there. and that’s where you’re making your decisions, we want to be there. To me, if you ask the publisher the question, his answer may be different. But for me, it is just to be of greater service to this industry and become an essential part about how people learn about comics. It’s not just reading comics. It’s not just sales to me. That’s an aspect that’s important.

But my real dream with this magazine, beyond 2027, is that somebody reads it and they read about whoever we’re profiling. Che Grayson, Scott Snyder, Mark Spears, or Alex Ross and they read it and he and she are like, you know what? I can make comics.  This is just a person. That’s one thing that’s really important to me with the magazine, is the how and the why.  Who, what, where, when, why.

All those questions. How and why interests me the most. In part, because I want people to read it and think, I could do that.

Then, they think they can do that and they work really hard and talk about the fight we mentioned earlier. It doesn’t work out. And then it does work out.

They keep going and they keep getting better and better and better. And one day, they’re so good, they’re so undeniable, we profile them on the cover. That’s the dream for me. Is that we help inspire people to make great comics. And read great comics, of course.

Samir Husni: Before I ask you my typical questions at the end, is there any question that I failed to ask you I should ask you about Comics! The Magazine?

Joe Keatinge: I mean, honestly, you’re doing great. Your insight is wonderful. So, I’m really grateful for the opportunity.

Samir Husni: Joe, tell me how did you get involved with comics in general?

Joe Keatinge: Oh, boy. Nobody really knows. Comics have just always been around. I am a child of the 80s. And comics were at 7-Eleven. Comics were at Toys R Us. Comics were everywhere. Comics were at newsstands. I think it was probably pack-ins with action figures. There was the Masters of the Universe had comics.

I believe Transformers had comics as well. G.I. Joe, maybe. But Masters of the Universe definitely did.

I had those toys around. So, I would guess that that’s how I was first exposed. However, I will say what made me really love comics were comic bookstores.

I was blessed enough to be surrounded by some of the greatest stores of all time. Like, Santa Monica, California, where I was frequently at. There was a store, unfortunately, no longer there. There was a store called Hi De Ho Comics. If you research the history of Hi De Ho, and I really hope someone writes an extensive history of Hi De Ho, I’d run it in the magazine. You know, it was a comic store where so many people came through.

And they had everything. And it was kind of a mess from what I remember. It wasn’t very, in terms of the organization, Rob Liefeld comics were next to Mobius, which was next to Hugo Pratt, which was next to Manga, which was next to Underground Comics. It was all just there. I remember the first time I ever saw Wizard was there.

I was just like, what is this? Why is Spider-Man wearing a, like a wizard hat? What is this? Everything was so wonderful and strange. Because it was just like Matt Groening, I discovered around the same time, pre-Simpsons, when it was Life and Hell ran in the newspapers. And then they had the Pantheon reprints there.

And it was just this wonderful assortment of work. And that’s really influenced my brain.

It also really influences the magazine. Because I don’t distinguish, people are like are you going to cover Manga at all? Are you going to cover Webtoons? You’re going to cover, it’s all comics. It’s all lines on paper.

A lot of the early issues obviously are influenced by what I’m, what I’m aware of and everything. But, again, talk about what I want in 26 – 27. I want there to be a larger scope to what we cover. I know I have blinders on. And I know there’s so much, I was talking to one of our frequent contributors. Well, he did the thing in number one.

He’s doing another thing in number 10. He’s interviewed in number six. It’s Jim Rugg.

And, you know, great guy. He wrote, he was one of the guys behind Cartoonist Kayfabe, which is really instrumental in building an audience. And he was saying after that Comics Pro conference I mentioned earlier, he realized there are more channels than ever to sell comics in.

Atom! Freeman, the publisher, joins our conversation…

Joe Keatimge: We’re just talking comics here. I was going to say what Jim Rugg was mentioning that there’s more channels than ever. And he also estimates that there are more creators working in comics right now than there ever has been, including the golden age, so to speak. I’m assuming there’s stuff I’m not aware of.

Samir Husni: My typical last questions are, one, if I come to visit you one evening at your house unannounced, what do I catch you doing? Reading a comic? Watching TV? On your computer having a glass of wine?

Joe Keatinge: I live a very private life. I’ll say that. I don’t talk about my personal life openly. But I may be fly fishing. I may not be home.

Samir Husni: And what keeps you up at night?

Joe Keatinge: That’s an excellent question. That might be my favorite question you’ve asked. Providing for my family.

And now for the lightly edited interview with Atom! Freeman, publisher of Comic! The Magazine:

Samir Husni: Tell me, from a business point of view, what’s the mission of Comics! The Magazine?

Atom! Freeman: Comics! The Magazine is designed to celebrate the world of comics. It’s designed to give somebody who is new to comics, maybe they just picked up their first Superman comic and they are trying to figure out what this world is.

It’s an entree into a world that Joe and I speak natively. I would say that from a marketing business side, it is a platform upon which marketers and advertisers and promoters can use to launch new properties into the world of comics. The world of comics is very open to new ideas.

It’s a wonderful place to build IP. We’re seeing companies that do multiple TV series, multiple video games. They have tons and tons of properties and projects that are going in other multimedia and making tens of millions of dollars there still launch all of their properties inside a world of comics.

The problem that we saw as marketers was how do we get in front of that audience? Because nothing that was happening on the internet was doing it in this way that magazines used to. There were many of us behind the scenes who were thinking, boy, we really just need a magazine. Eventually, Joe and I ran out of excuses for why not to make one.

We had to do it. I think from a business standpoint, it is a platform. From a consumer standpoint, it is just a celebration and a guide for the world of comics.

Samir Husni: Since issue Zero, has it been a walk in a rose garden or did you have some challenges? How did you overcome them?

Atom! Freeman: Wide open field, Samir. Wide open. We’re just one step in front of the next.

I will say the biggest challenge from a business side was convincing companies that really do need a platform like Comics! The Magazine, that a print advertising budget is something they needed to make room for. They all have advertising budgets. They all have marketing budgets.

But print advertising budgets are not something they’ve been doing for a while. Convincing them to make that room or to take away from something else in order to get involved early, that was a challenge early on. Now I will say that our challenge really is just where do we grow to? We are the best-selling magazine about comics in our space.

There are a few others. They are with different focuses and different mission statements.

But as a result of that, really our biggest challenge right now is what do we do next? How do we keep the magazine itself exciting? How do we build off of the success of the magazine? Those are the bigger questions that Joe and I spend a lot of time talking about.

Samir Husni: Were you surprised when you saw the value of the variant covers selling on eBay for $150 and $80?

Atom! Freeman: Listen, it takes a lot. I’ve been at this now for, I don’t know, 30 years, Samir.

I’ve been in this industry. It takes a lot to really surprise me. I was pleasantly taken aback by the values.

But we know the value of a secret, the value of a surprise. That’s the real challenge. That’s why we come to fiction.

That’s why we come to story, is we want to be surprised. And so we know now occasionally do, like I will say, the Spawn one I really thought was going to, I didn’t know if it was going to do as well as it did. And we have a couple more that are coming up, a couple other surprises that are coming up that I think are going to have a similar effect.

But you never know. Where the market decides those values land, that’s always a surprise, no matter what you do.

Samir Husni: Do you think this can only be done in print?

Atom! Freeman:  So far, yeah, so far.

Magazines, books and movies, TV, all of them really did lend themselves to the shift to digital. I don’t know about you, but I don’t even have cable TV or broadcast TV in my home anymore. I only stream.

I do still buy physical books, but I’m just as likely to read them as a Kindle app on my phone, right? Audiobooks are more likely what I consume the most. I will say that of those other platforms, comics really has not made the shift to digital in the way that the others have. And so while we’ve discussed what it would look like to make Comics! The Magazine digital, I think that so far, everything we’ve heard would just be diminishing of the print version.

And I will say that there’s a focus that comes with reading in print that we’re not getting from anything digital. If you’re reading the pages of a magazine, you’re never going to be caught off guard by an alert popping up on the screen, on the page. You’re never going to have anything reminding you of a calendar invite that you agreed to six months ago, which is not exactly what’s going on here, maybe a little.

But it’s never going to happen that way. It’s going to be you are able to sit and focus. And so as a result, there’s this really interesting thing where websites, even social media posts, they could go 10,000 words.

They could go 1,000 words, but they don’t. They go 10, 20, maybe 50 words. We, in a magazine, we have your attention.

So in that having of your attention, we are able to tell more complex stories. We’re able to have more complex conversations because you’re going to sit and digest it in a way that you don’t, anything that’s on a screen.

Everything about the experience. I love the fact that you have Mr. Magazine because I do think that magazines are going to have a comeback. What we’re seeing in print in comics and magazine right now, I expect to see all over the place. People want that community that comes from sitting and consuming something on a monthly schedule, and they want the ability to reclaim their attention.

They want those things, and all of that comes with print, and all of that comes with magazines. I also want to focus. I’m already seeing it in my other interests that I have.

I just picked up two new jujitsu magazines. Field and Stream is back, and it’s a huge, beautiful format.

I think people are ready to unplug and to focus. Unplug and refocus.

It’s a good time to be Mr. Magazine.

I can tell you it’s going to be a good time for that.

Samir Husni: Allow me to ask some personal questions. First, I have to ask, why the exclamation mark after your first name?

Atom! Freeman: That was a social media, or early, it wasn’t even social media. It was an early Internet joke that kind of got out of hand, and it just made it easier to get myself. I’m a marketer by trade, so it just made it easier to get people to talk about me and to quote me and, you know, ask for interviews.

And also, it’s fun listening to British people pronounce it. That’s always fun, too.

Samir Husni: If I come to visit you one evening unannounced, what do I catch you doing? Reading a book, watching TV, fly fishing?

Atom! Freeman: I’m trying to get everyone in comics to fly fish, but we’ll see.

I’m not nearly as private as Joe, but I will tell you that I, in the evenings especially, sometimes I’m gardening. I spend a lot of time, I’m very lucky in that we moved into a property with a big garden. I do spend a lot of time in that, you know, might be a dip in the pool, might be whatever.

But a lot of times it is just sitting and reading. I’ve learned that if I don’t sit and read, my 11-year-old doesn’t sit and read, and I want that for him more than anything else. And, you know, otherwise it’s just cooking, spending time with family.

I will say, the more often than I like, I’m working. Because, you know, trying to build a career inside of comics, it means you do a lot of different, you wear a lot of different hats.

Samir Husni: And what keeps you up at night these days?

Atom! Freeman: Keeps me up at night these days. That’s an excellent question. Very little.

I sleep really good. I work real hard, Samir. I wake up early.

I’m already on, I was up at like 4 or 5 a.m. and outbuilding bamboo garden beds and then working for several hours. And then I’ll spend some time with family. So, by the time my head hits the pillow, it takes a lot to keep me awake.

But when it does, it’s usually these businesses that we run, that Joe and I are involved in, they’re here because people have forgotten how. They’re viable because there’s not as much competition for what we do because people have forgotten these skills. And so a lot of times we will come up with an idea or a solution, and it doesn’t feel like it fits right. Or if we just had more experience, we might be able to find somebody who knew how to solve this problem.

Those are the things that will wake me up is, that’s not how we should have done that? It’s that stuff. So, running businesses in this environment that are not AI data centers, it’ll keep you up at night, that’s for sure.

Samir Husni: Well, see the nice thing about AI, I didn’t ask you about AI, but the nice thing about if it’s print, AI cannot steal it.

Atom! Freeman: That’s very true. You know, Samir, one of the things that happens in our world is any comic that is on a digital platform ends up on a piracy site. And Comics! The Magazine is on no piracy sites right now.

Samir Husni:  Thank you and best of luck.

Born from the womb of the web, The Fabulist launches its first print issue in 2026 after being a web only platform since 2007.  To quote Josh Wilson, the magazine’s editor and publisher, in his letter to the readers accompanying issue zero of the magazine, “In a world that’s glutted with disposable digital ephemera, we love working with print: It is a tactile, tangible, dynamic, and long-lasting medium that transforms your experience as a reader, and celebrates the meaning and value of the works we publish.”

And Mr. Magazine™ can’t but 100% agree with Mr. Wilson.  There is no better place to combine “amazing stories, rich illustrations, and wild art,” than print.  The Fabulist publishers believe so much in print that they make their business model print first.

Intrigued by the concept and the business plan, I reached out to Mr. Wilson to ask him more about the inception of The Fabulist, the plans and the reason for the print magazine after being a web only platform.  We had a lovely conversation and learned the secrets behind the transformation from digital to print.

So, without any further ado, please join me in this lovely conversation with Josh Wilson, editor and publisher of The Fabulist.

But first, the soundbites:

On the reason for print: “I realized that print really was something people were attracted to and aspired to be a part of.”

On the background history of The Fabulist: “For several years we printed chapbooks, short 20, 30, 40, 50 pages, saddle stitched, single story publications. Then we began to think through our model and what we could do with it, which brought us around to this print magazine. I’m surprised to see that it’s really gaining traction.”

On his background: “I started out in print in the 1993 – 1995 period. I’m a journalist who worked at SF Gate in San Francisco and never went back to print until now. And it’s been a pleasure. I’m also amazed to find that readers and writers and everybody else is thrilled to see print happening.”

On The Fabulist elevator pitch: “We’re a literary, a speculative literature magazine. We publish fantasy and science fiction.”

On the business model: “I find that digital monetization is very, very hard, and it’s amazing to me that print from the previous millennium, the previous century, turns out to be a viable business model.”

On the zero issue: “It is a viable standalone issue. But we wanted to just see what we could do with print.”

On the art of curation in print: “There are space considerations in print, which makes the curation process more interesting. What order do the stories go in? What’s the effect of reading them in order? Each piece of art and its positioning, the layout.”

More on the art of curation in print: “I find it a much more interesting and creative medium to curate for that the constraints produce innovation and fun. Whereas on the Internet, every page is the same. It’s a template.”

On the future: “We want to continue to develop work in print and on the web. But we want to lead with print as a beautiful standalone document.”

On what keeps him up at night: “Worrying about the magazine and its success. There’s always something to worry about.”

To learn more about The Fabulist or to order a subscription please click here.

And now for the lightly edited conversation with Josh Wilson, editor and publisher, The Fabulist:

Samir Husni: First, congratulations on the new magazine.

Josh Willson: Thank you.

Samir Husni: Anybody that launches a print magazine today deserves to be congratulated.

Josh Wilson: Thank you.

Samir Husni: Tell me, what’s the story of The Fabulist?

Josh Wilson: The story of The Fabulist

Well, way back in 2007, I kept getting my stories declined by magazines, and I decided to start a little blog, just a website where I could put my stories and those of my friends. About six months later, we began getting submissions, which was very strange because I never posted a submissions link.

People would just email us their stories. It turned out that we had been listed in a writer’s market called Duotrope. I don’t know who put us there, but we ended up in this writer’s market, and the submissions have been coming constantly since then, far more than we can deal with, and usually better than my own stories.

I took down all my stories and, for a long time, posted new work whenever we could get around to it. I would say about the mid-teens, 2015, 2016, 2017, we were at a reading event in San Francisco, where we live. I was approached by Elizabeth Gonzales James, who went on to become a novelist. She has two novels out, The Bullet Swallower and Mona at Sea. The Bullet Swallower is being developed for a feature film. She approached me before her first book contract and said, Do I need any help?

I remember being overwhelmed by submissions. I said, I could really use a hand managing all the submissions. She read a gigantic backlog of hundreds of submissions and said, You could do a story a week. Why don’t you?

I said, OK. We went with that. At that point, I realized we really should have a contract.

I contacted other publishers I know and asked them for advice. We made a writer contract. There are a few other steps to this.

One is that I realized there is a big difference between genre and literary journals. We were kind of in both places. The literary journals, you often pay a reading fee and don’t get paid for your work, to the extent that I would send a submission’s call to creative writing and MFA programs and get the department chairs sending me their work for this blog.

But the genre magazines, Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, Asimov’s magazine, these all came out of the pulp era. There was a very strong writer’s advocacy movement. A lot of that business was pretty fast and loose. In the genre world, you don’t pay reading fees. You always pay the writers.

We decided we should at least do an honorarium. We grew that from $25 to $100 per story. Still operating at a loss. All digitally.

Finally, the final chapter for this evolution, in 2023, in the depths of the COVID pandemic, we were, I guess at the end of the worst of it. A colleague of mine here in San Francisco, Jennifer Joseph from Manic D Press, a great local imprint that has their work collected in the Library of Congress, their LGBTQ work, said that she’s going to AWP, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference. This was in Seattle.

Did I want to share a table, an exhibitor table at the book fair? I thought, yes, why not? I did that rashly because I didn’t have anything to sell because it was all digital, but I realized the contract that we had been using enabled us to make books. So I got an $80 color printer and began making chapbooks. And my colleague, our art director, Adam Myers, is a gentleman of very high production values.

We produced some beautiful books and they sold. They almost sold out. And I realized that print really was something people were attracted to and aspired to be a part of.

For several years we printed chapbooks, short 20, 30, 40, 50 pages, saddle stitched, single story publications. Then we began to think through our model and what we could do with it, which brought us around to this print magazine. I’m surprised to see that it’s really gaining traction.

This is after months of agonizing and product development. We got a small grant from CLMP, Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, to hire a digital marketing specialist. Lots of thoughts about how to convert from a weekly digital blog to an issue-based periodical.

I started out in print in the 1993 – 1995 period. I’m a journalist who worked at SF Gate in San Francisco and never went back to print until now. And it’s been a pleasure. I’m also amazed to find that readers and writers and everybody else is thrilled to see print happening.

So that’s where we are. I guess that’s a little bit of a long intro.

Samir Husni: In 2025, it looks like a lot of independent publishers, like yourself, are rediscovering print and bringing print magazines to the market.You were born from the digital womb, bringing The Fabulist to print. Tell me, if you are going to give an elevator pitch about what The Fabulist is, what would you tell people?

Josh Wilson: My elevator pitch for The Fabulist is that we’re a literary, a speculative literature magazine. We publish fantasy and science fiction.

But with a literary bent, a magic realist bent, there’s a lot of interest in what’s been called new weird and new fabulism. And we feel that there’s a lot of terrain that is undeveloped for speculative fiction and speculative literature, poetry and art that doesn’t quite fit in genre. Genre has a lot of straight expectations.

We feel that there’s a lot more room to develop this stuff, that we don’t want to be constrained by the expectations of the market, that certainly there’s no limit to the work being produced — the fantastical work that’s not realist fiction, that’s not straight genre, that sometimes sits in between. And it needs a place, a beautiful home. We tried to develop that beautiful home on the Internet, and it worked.

We have a brand. We’re an established presence. But we didn’t have a business model.

I find that digital monetization is very, very hard, and it’s amazing to me that print from the previous millennium, the previous century, turns out to be a viable business model. I guess that’s longer than an elevator pitch.

Samir Husni: It’s a very tall building.

Josh Wilson: Yes. We’re on the way up.

Samir Husni: Your business model is based on giving subscribers, a free complimentary zero issue or a dummy copy. So what’s the idea behind this business model, giving the one issue free for people who subscribe and then billing them technically per issue?

Josh Wilson: Yes. Two reasons.

First, the per issue billing was something I observed and we observed in Patreon. It’s a creator’s platform. It’s like Kickstarter, but you make your contributions serially over time. And musicians and artists and so on use it and every month you pay $2 or $10 or whatever and you get a new song or a new story or a new piece of art. So, that seemed like a really viable model.

It’s been of interest in the journalism world as well, this monthly income. Rather than having it all happen at once in a cluster annually, it gives the reader a lot of flexibility to exit without having to make a full commitment. So, we decided, we tried a Patreon account and it did work, but we get double hit with fees.

Patreon takes 3% or 5% and the credit card company takes a percent, and we really wanted to reduce that friction. So, we are selling subscriptions without Patreon. We are going with a bimonthly for now and we hope to increase to monthly. So that’s why we’re billing per issue.

And the free issue was our marketing consultant, a gentleman named Neal Gorenflo. He is a marketing guy. He started a publication himself called Shareable, Shareable.net and it covered the sharing economy when that was first coming up.

He’s a very astute and accomplished marketing person who said, you got to have a free offer. You got to have a no risk trial. And we already knew we were going to forge ahead with the print periodical and had made this issue zero.

You called it a dummy. It is a viable standalone issue. But we wanted to just see what we could do with print.

I had a whole bunch of those, you know, in a box on our shelf in our spacious corporate offices here. I thought, okay, let’s do it. Let’s use these.

I had to do another print run. We ran out. It’s been so popular.

I’m going down to San Jose to a printer a little later today to pick up another 150 copies.

Samir Husni: One of the things about print is you must do more curation than digital. As an experienced journalist, how is your curation takes place or the difference between accepting something for digital or accepting something for print?

Josh Wilson: We remain really concerned about quality control the whole way through. So, we did not and we never wanted to treat the Internet as a disposable medium where we could just throw stuff.

We always had a long review process. How will this look in our pages? How much work does the story need? It starts with whether we love it and we want to see it flourish. And if we love it, we’ll commit to it.

I would not say that we’re treating the Internet as more of an easy medium to throw stuff into.

There are space considerations in print, which makes the curation process more interesting. What order do the stories go in? What’s the effect of reading them in order? Each piece of art and its positioning, the layout.

I find it a much more interesting and creative medium to curate for, because the constraints produce innovation and fun. Whereas on the Internet, every page is the same. It’s a template.

We try to make it beautiful and we’re going to do a design refresh and get that website up to speed. But, although it is a boundless medium, it is ironically much more constrained, I think, than print. Because you can’t do an interesting layout.

For all its dynamism, it’s much harder to make it an art piece. And with this print magazine, we want to make an art piece. This is collectible.

Samir Husni: When’s your first issue coming out?

Josh Wilson: January. We had to push it back because of the two holidays, there’s no way we can get the proof back. And then everybody’s going out of state at the end of December.

So mid-January, we aim to have that out and then bi-monthly afterwards. I was just looking at the new cover and it’s great. It’s quite different, too.

Samir Husni: Is there any question I’m supposed to ask you, that I did not ask you?

Josh Wilson: I suppose you could ask me about the state of genre and literary publishing in print and online. I find that fascinating and something I’ve gone deep into over the summer, although I might talk a little bit.

Samir Husni: So tell me about the competition. Who’s out there?

Josh Wilson: The interesting thing is a realization that the folks here aren’t competing. The audience for written-text genre fiction, fantasy and science fiction mostly, and the stuff that spills out over into the literary edges of that, is substantial and undiscovered and undeveloped.

There are a lot of conventions and conferences that happen nationally and globally, science fiction and fantasy conventions and comic book and movie conventions and the ones that are game conventions. And there’s some overlap, some Venn diagram overlap, but the literary conferences are tiny. The World Science Fiction Convention, where they give out the Hugo Awards, it’s one of the highest awards in genre fiction, only gets about 8 to 10,000 attendees, whereas Comic Con in San Diego or Dragon Con in Atlanta, Georgia gets tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of attendees.

These people do read books, maybe not a full percentage of them. But a lot of people are genre fans without ever knowing that they’re genre readers. They watch movies, they watch TV, they love Star Trek, they love Star Wars. They’ll follow the movies and the characters.

The same is true in the literary world. When I was at AWP, the Association of Writers and Writing Conferences conference in LA, we covered all our expenses, including travel and conference registration and housing.  We covered all our costs.

A lot of it was these young MFAs walking up to our table and realizing that they could do genre, that they weren’t stuck in a realist, forgive the term, a realist ghetto. There was a lot of room for them to follow their interest and desires.

We broadly feel that the audience is vast and undeveloped. And there isn’t a national, there aren’t national scale, mass media scale consumer magazines. They’re more literary journals.

So, we’re all working together. And there’s a lot of great ones. Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, Analog are all the warhorses from the pulp era.

There’s a host of amazing online magazines that sometimes have print as well. Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Nightmare magazine, Strange Horizons, and Uncanny magazine are really sort of among the top tier of these online magazines that do issues in e-books. And sometimes audio books as well.

But also release all the stories for free on the web. So, there’s this freemium model. And then they’ll do print on demand for print.

I think we may be distinct in really going, switching hard to print first. The editor of, publisher of Clarkesworld, Neil Clarke, who’s an analyst of the industry and an accomplished publisher, pointed out that he goes where the readers are. He has an audio book version.

The people who listen to audio books are different from the ones who read online or who read e-books even. They’re all distinct. And he has a print on demand magazine.

We may be, The Fabulist, may be taking a risk on going so hard on print first. But we are at break-even. We, in about three or four weeks, we sold more than 100 subscriptions with an online ad campaign.

And it’s very interesting to realize that we have such a latent audience. We were getting one to five subscriptions every day. And the subscription drive ends tomorrow.

We’re going to assess, redesign it, redeploy it around our issue one with the new cover. The fact that you must go where the readers are is, as Neil (Clarke) says, is absolutely true. And we want to do audio books.

We can do e-books. And we want to continue to develop work in print and on the web. But we want to lead with print as a beautiful standalone document. This is a distinction.

There’s another magazine, Reckoning magazine, that also does a beautiful print document. And then eyedroppers out their content for free. I feel that that’s an exciting approach that you can do because audiences don’t overlap. Digital is a loss leader. And digital content enters social media and the Internet as a sort of promotional mechanism for your publication.

The print people who are repeatedly exposed to it, they realize they want the magazine. Although there’s a specific strategy we did. We have a landing page.

We show off all the interiors. We boast about the contributors. Try to showcase our production values.

Samir Husni: My typical last two questions. If I come uninvited to your home one evening, what do I catch Josh doing? Cooking, having a glass of wine, watching TV, reading a book?

Josh Wilson:  I’m cooking. I love to cook. I’m feeding other people. I want them all to eat, so I try to do a good job.

And I’m usually listening to an audio book while I’m cooking, because I can’t read it. Right now, I’m listening to Barbara Tuchman, the historian.

She’s got a great book called The March of Folly about governments doing stupid things over time. After dinner, ideally, everybody else cleans up and I go back to work.

Samir Husni: And what keeps you up at night these days?

Josh Wilson: Worrying about the magazine and its success. There’s always something to worry about. But I have been sufficiently exhausted that I usually fall asleep quickly.

I’m reading a great book that is keeping me up. It’s a new version of The Tempest, Shakespeare’s Tempest. It’s called Kalivas by the author Nick Mamatas, who is one of our book reviewers.

And it’s in the future. And there’s been a cataclysm. And Caliban/Kalivas lives on the Farallon Islands off San Francisco.

His mother was a nanotech Sycorax. The witch was a nanotech engineer. And Prospero is a techno magnate in this post-human society who invades the island and colonizes it.

And it’s a romp. It’s a great read. That’s been keeping me up a little too late.

Samir Husni: Excellent. Thank you and good luck.

John F. Kelly fell in love with comics at age 10. He was so fascinated by Air Pirates Funnies that he dedicated the second issue of his new magazine, Dummy, to the Air Pirates. His story reminded me a lot of my own childhood in Lebanon, when I first discovered Superman at the same age that he discovered Air Pirates Funnies.

John went on to become a writer, a marketer, an educator, and later in life, an editor and publisher of a new magazine he aptly named Dummy. In the magazine industry, the term “dummy” refers to a prototype edition of a publication. He had originally been showing the prototype of his magazine and referred to it as the Pee-Wee Playhouse zine prototype—essentially, the dummy issue. And thus, Dummy magazine was born.

As a comics historian, John uses Dummy to explore comics history one subject at a time. In addition to the magazine, he also hosts a YouTube channel called DummyZine. I had the pleasure of interviewing John, where we talked about his love for print, his views on comics and their history, the impact of new technologies such as AI, and the reasons many are returning to print as independent publishers in this digital age.

So, without any further ado, please join me in this pleasant conversation with an editor and publisher that reminded me of myself falling in love with comics and transitioning to magazines.  

Enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ Interview with John Kelly, publisher and editor of Dummy magazine.  But first, the soundbites:

On what is Dummy magazine: “It’s a comics history publication that I focus on one particular topic for each issue.”

On why he launched Dummy: “I missed the printed magazine, holding something in my hand that had something that I spent a long time writing about and researching.”

On naming the magazine Dummy: “I was taking out this Pee-Wee’s Playhouse zine and showing it to them and saying, here’s the dummy of my new zine, my new Pee-Wee’s Playhouse zine. And that’s just what I was calling it because I started in printing and publishing, and that was just a term that I was familiar with.”

On the resurgence of print in this digital age: “There’s an analog movement for different people in this country and in the world. We consume so much information online. Print is like taking a break medium. I think that’s part of it.”

On the difference between issue one and two: “It was very important to me to have it look like a real magazine, so that there was a much more of a disciplined approach to it than my, let’s just throw this thing together, first issue. The second issue, which took a lot longer, in part was also tracking down the art.”

On his love for Air Pirates Funnies since he was a kid: “I opened Air Pirates Funnies number one and looked inside and saw, ah, this is not Mickey Mouse. This is not the Mickey Mouse that I know. They’re doing something very different here. And so from that point on, I’ve been really puzzled and fascinated by the Air Pirates. This was my chance to explore that deeper.”

On his view about AI: “I don’t really consider any technology a foe. I think things can be misused. Anything can be misused, and AI certainly misuses a lot of things.”

More on his views on AI: “Most of my friends are cartoonists or artists or writers. I’m a writer myself. The threat of AI stealing the intellectual property of artists and other people, plus other issues beyond that, makes it extremely dangerous and something that is theft.”

On his advice to start a new magazine: “It’s very difficult and very expensive, but that’s not a reason not to do it, right?”

On what he does to rewind: “I don’t really rewind.  I’m working all of the time.”

On what keeps him up at night: “Nothing. I sleep great. I take care of myself. I eat well. I exercise.  I’m doing something I absolutely love to do.  I’m completely content with everything.”

And now for the lightly edited Mr. Magazine™ Interview with John Kelly, publisher and editor of Dummy magazine:

Samir Husni: Give me the elevator pitch of this new magazine, Dummy.

John Kelly: Well, it’s a funny story. The elevator pitch, I guess, would be that it’s a comics history publication that I focus on one particular topic for each issue, and the guideline for what that topic is, is that it’s something that I’m extremely interested in, maybe I know something about it, but I want to know a lot more.

So by doing the research in the writing and putting it all together, I do a very deep dive on that topic so that I educate myself about it. And as a result, when it’s printed, others can also learn what I’ve learned.

Samir Husni: What’s the genesis of the magazine and why did you decide to call it Dummy?

John Kelly:  It’s a funny backstory because I was not planning on doing this at all.

I’ve been writing about comics history for many years. I’ve been writing for The Comics Journal magazine since the late 1980s or early 1990s, but more than 35 years. And I’ve written many, many pieces for that publication.

In recent years, as magazines, the printed magazines, have mostly disappeared, including, for the most part, The Comics Journal. They do a print publication occasionally. Most of my pieces have only existed online, and I was just kind of getting sick of that.

I missed the printed magazine, holding something in my hand that had something that I spent a long time writing about and researching. I’d written many pieces, and they only existed somewhere out there on the internet. I love printed materials.

I certainly am of the age that I grew up with them, and I wanted to put together something for myself. I chose to do that first issue on the Art of the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse show because I knew the people who were involved in that process, and I had seen all their archival material many times. So, I put together, really just for myself, a printed publication about that story, and I brought it to a friend’s house.

He had a color copy machine, and I had laid it out in InDesign and quickly put it together, brought over some flats to his house. We printed out the pages, folded, stapled them, and there it was. I held it in my hand, and I was very happy, and I thought that would be it.

I thought that I was making one copy just for myself because it was something that I wanted to do. Then people started seeing it. I was showing it to them, and I was saying, you know the term dummy in printing? It refers to a prototype publication. I was taking out this Pee-Wee’s Playhouse zine and showing it to them and saying, here’s the dummy of my new zine, my new Pee-Wee’s Playhouse zine. And that’s just what I was calling it because I started in printing and publishing, and that was just a term that I was familiar with.

More and more people wanted copies of it, so I thought I would print up a couple of them. I wanted to give a copy to the people who I had interviewed, to Gary Panter and Mark Newgarden and Kaz and Wayne White and Ric Heitzman. I wanted to send them copies for their own, and I thought I would print up 10 copies of it.

But more people learned about it and they wanted copies, so I, reluctantly, decided that I would print up a hundred copies of it. And the last thing that I did before I sent the files to the printer was, I thought, well it’s got to have a name, you know? I just don’t want to call it the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse zine? I wanted to call it something, and I liked the name Dummy. It was stupid and it had a secondary meaning to it, so I thought it was kind of funny to call a magazine Dummy.

Very quickly, maybe in 90 seconds, I composed the logotype for that name for the masthead title and just slapped it on to the magazine at the last moment. I was printing a hundred copies thinking that it would take me 10 years to get rid of them, that they would be in boxes in my basement forever. Then I posted one little thing on my Facebook page saying, hey, I made up some copies of this.

If you want one, just contact me. And they sold out in two hours. They were all gone immediately.

I was like, wow. Then the money from selling those copies allowed me to print 300 more, and those sold out immediately too. Then since then, I’ve just been reprinting them and still today, I still get orders for that copy.

That’s basically how it all started, but it was not something that was planned. I’m extremely happy that there are people out there who want it, who want a printed publication. I didn’t realize that there as many people out there, like me, who missed print and the printed matter. I’m happy that they exist.

Samir Husni: Why do you think is this resurgence of the independent return to print?

John Kelly: There’s an analog movement for different people in this country and in the world.

We consume so much information online. Print is like taking a break medium. I think that’s part of it. There’s a novelty aspect to it too, that people are not expecting a printed publication that’s well printed, produced, and designed as possible.

I want it to be a beautiful piece that people can look at. I can only say personally, I absolutely hate reading long things online. I’m getting older, maybe that has something to do with it.

My eyesight is failing and the chore of reading something online that is extremely long and complicated. I just won’t do it, and that includes my own work. I still write for The Comics Journal, and I tend to write very long pieces, one of the things that prompted me to really embrace doing a publication again, myself, was that I would say I wouldn’t even read my pieces online because they’re too long.

Not that because they’re bad, but just because there’s too long, and you get distracted. You get pulled away from something and you think, well, I’ll go back to that. Then you’re bombarded with 9 million other things that take you away from it.

You end up two years later thinking, oh, there was something that I wanted to read. If you have the printed thing, you can read part of it, put it down, read it again. And if you like it, you can save it and read it years from now.

Samir Husni: Your journey from issue one to issue two, has it been a walk in a rose garden or you had some issues?

John Kelly: No, no, no, no, no. With the first issue, since I wasn’t expecting it to exist, I probably designed that issue very quickly. I have rudimentary InDesign skills and layout skills.

I can get by to do like a mock-up of something. I’ve been using Adobe products since they came out, so I know how to use them. Also the subject matter for that first issue, the looseness of the art of the Pee Wee Herman program really worked well with my somewhat laissez-faire design for that issue, right? Once I was going to do a second issue, I wanted to really step it up and make it as beautiful as I possibly could.

All the images in the second issue are scanned at very high resolution from primary sources, so either the original art or usually a very rare, printed publication. There’s a lot of work that goes into cleaning up those images and having them color corrected and presented on the page so that they look like the actual artifact, like you could reach down and pick it up off the page.

That’s what I was going for, at least. It was very important to me to have it look like a real magazine, so that there was a much more of a disciplined approach to it than my, let’s just throw this thing together, first issue. The second issue, which took a lot longer, in part was also tracking down the art.

There were specific pieces of art that I wanted for that issue that took a long time to find, like who owned the originals for this piece, who had the original piece or who had a copy of this thing that there’s maybe three copies in existence. Getting that and then scanning it and working with the it took a long time, but in the end, it was worth it. Also, the Air Pirates story is a very complicated story.

It’s an extremely complicated story that I don’t think has been captured in the way that I’ve done in this issue. So, there were a lot of moving parts and a lot of people that I was talking to from the Air Pirates and around the Air Pirates for that issue. I wanted to make sure that I said that story as well as I possibly could.

Samir Husni: Judging by the poster above your chair, you’re an Air Pirates fan?

John Kelly: Oh yeah, sure. The Air Pirates have been very important to me since I was a little boy. I first saw copies of Air Pirates one and two when I was 10 years old and I was over a friend’s house. This friend had an older brother who was a junior or senior in high school.

He had a stash of underground comics hidden in his room that I knew about. When I would be over their house and when the brother wasn’t around, I would sneak into his room and go through the comics and look at them. I was way younger than I should have been looking at those things. But mixed in with the guy’s copies of Zap and Freak Brothers and some other underground comics were these like Mickey Mouse comic books.

At first, I didn’t know what they were. To me, they were just like regular Mickey Mouse comic books. That’s what they look like to me.

I paid no attention to them. But I wondered why those were there? Why were these Mickey Mouse comic books in there with these dirty comic books? And eventually I opened Air Pirates Funnies number one and looked inside and saw, ah, this is not Mickey Mouse. This is not the Mickey Mouse that I know.

They’re doing something very different here. And so from that point on, I’ve been really puzzled and fascinated by the Air Pirates.

This was my chance to explore that deeper.

Samir Husni: We live in a digital age and AI is everywhere now. Do you consider AI a friend or a foe of the printed matter?

John Kelly: I don’t really consider any technology a foe. I think things can be misused. Anything can be misused, and AI certainly misuses a lot of things.

Most of my friends are cartoonists or artists or writers. I’m a writer myself. The threat of AI stealing the intellectual property of artists and other people, plus other issues beyond that, makes it extremely dangerous and something that is theft.

I agree with those friends of mine who absolutely hate it and don’t want it in their lives. They don’t want their artwork stolen and reconfigured and used for other purposes without their permission. I completely understand that, and I support that.

That said, AI is a lot more than just that. That’s a bad side of what it does. I don’t think we were recording this, but when we first started, you were talking about how you do your transcriptions and that’s an AI process. That’s helpful.

That’s extremely helpful. There are other things that AI can do that is beneficial.

So, I am not 100 percent against it, because in theory it can be a very useful tool. I remember when desktop publishing was first starting, that was a threat to people who were publishing in the earlier, more traditional ways.

Society adapted to the new technology and now it’s what’s used. I still love the old methods of printing. I print a lot of things on a letterpress machine.

I love the fact that I have access to a letterpress, not just one, access to several letterpress machines. And I take advantage of that, and I print things with that technology.

I love the way that they look. It’s not efficient for me to be printing an entire issue of Dummy on a letterpress machine these days. And so it’s offset printed in Chicago and then mailed to me.

I would love it if I had a letterpress machine or some other old-fashioned printer in my basement that I could crank it out whenever I wanted a new copy and do it myself. But, logistically, I’m not able to do that.

So, that’s how I view AI.  It can be a very bad thing. In some ways it is a very bad thing. In a lot of ways, it’s a very bad thing.

In other ways, it’s something that we all use, whether we know it or not.

Samir Husni: If someone came to you and says, John, I have this idea of a new magazine, should I go ahead, and do it? Would you tell them, yes? Or you would tell them forget about it.

John Kelly:  It’s very difficult and very expensive, but that’s not a reason not to do it, right? It would depend on what their idea was. I hope that because of Dummy and a couple of other newer publications that I really love, I hope a lot more people start doing their own, whatever it is, their own printed thing.

I was just at the Small Press Expo this past weekend in Bethesda, Maryland, and I ran, along with Gary Hallgren, a member of the Air Pirates, we ran a workshop for younger artists on how to make mini-comics, Tijuana Bibles, and how to print your own little publication. We had a jammed session. The session was sold out, and it was great to see all these artists making their own little comics and holding them up and showing them. They were coming up to me afterwards and showing me what they did, and I loved that. I think people should explore whatever channels they can to have their expression created, whether that’s digital, whether it’s printed, whether it’s music, whether it’s painting, anything that they have a passion for.

I would say that I think one of the reasons Dummy is doing well is that it’s really a pure labor of love on my part. I think that’s very important. I’m not doing it because this will, I’m thinking, oh, this is going to make me money, because that’s probably not going to happen. My goal is that it makes enough money that I can keep doing it.  So far it is.

The reason to do it is because it’s something I want to do. Each issue of Dummy so far there’s only been two, but subsequent issues, they’re all going to be based on, here’s something that I wish existed, you know, here’s something that I don’t know enough about. As a writer, the only way that I learn, truly learn about something, is through the process of writing about it, through the process of researching it, to talking to the people who were involved in it, and writing the story, and then rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting, and talking to more people, and then it comes together for me. I’m doing it as, because my focus, my target audience is one person, that’s me.

I’m the target audience. It’s something that I wish that existed, that if I walked into a store and I saw, or if I saw somebody posting about it, I would say, I need that, I’ve been waiting my whole life for that thing, and now it exists. So, if other people feel the same way, that’s great, but I’m doing it for myself, and that’s important for people, and especially doing a printed thing like this, it’s just because you got to really do it, because it’s something that you’re just motivated to do, because you want it to exist.

Samir Husni: Well, John, before I ask you my typical last two questions, is there any question I should have asked you I did not? John Kelly:  No, I think you’ve hit all of them so far. I’m having a lot of fun doing this. It’s a lot of work.

It’s a tremendous amount of work. I would say one thing that I wasn’t expecting, I hadn’t really thought about was the amount of work.  I sell a lot of copies of the magazine as a result, I’m going to the post every single day, dropping off stuff at the post office to mail out, sometimes two times a day, sometimes three times a day, bringing piles of mailers stuffed with Dummys to the post office, and that’s great. It’s a lot of time.

It’s a lot of time to stuff them into the envelope to get them to look the way that they want to. All the mailers are hand stamped. You know, they have a little note in there.

There’re some extra items. It’s very time consuming. There’re issues with mail delivery at times, especially right now, international mail delivery is really a nightmare.

You take a lot of questions from people about their orders.  I also sell t-shirts and other related merchandise. Somebody orders the wrong color or the wrong size.  What do you do then? There’s a lot of customer service stuff that takes a lot of time away from the actual writing.

I wasn’t expecting that because I wasn’t expecting any of this. It’s been a real learning experience.

Samir Husni:  If I come to visit you one evening, unannounced, what do I catch John doing? Reading a book, watching TV, cooking, having a glass of wine? What do you do to rewind at the end of the day?

John Kelly: I don’t really rewind.  I’m working all of the time.

The only I leave the house is I go to the gym every day, early in the morning. I get up really early. I get up around 4, 4:30 in the morning and I start working on Dummy at that point.

I’ll go to the gym around 7:00 or 8:00 am and then I’m working on Dummy or something for The Comics Journal or some other project until my wife and I usually watch about an hour of non-traditional television. It’s like a movie or a documentary or something, maybe an hour and a half of that before I, I usually start falling asleep about 10 minutes into it. Then we’re in bed at 10 or 9 pm.

Samir Husni: What keeps you up at night?

John Kelly: Nothing. I sleep great. I take care of myself. I eat well.

I exercise.  I’m doing something I absolutely love to do.  I’m completely content with everything.

I’m a very happy person at this point in my life. I don’t think there’s anything that keeps me up at night.  Everybody’s life has issues and concerns, and you just deal with them as they come.

I’m like powerless over most things. Usually, I figure out a way to make things work.

Samir Husni:  Thank you and good luck.

Nothing brings more joy to the heart of Mr. Magazine™ than seeing three young people publishing a print magazine.  When I heard about Craftwerk magazine, I thought it is, yet another magazine aimed at old folks who enjoy arts and crafts at their later years.  And wrong I was.  Craftwerk is not for old folks and nor it is published by old folks.  It is the brainchild of two young graduates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago assisted with a third graduate from the same school.  Even combining all their ages will not give you one old person’s age.

Smart, driven and determined those three young people are adamant on making a difference in the art and crafts word.  In their issue one, that they labeled “The Manifesto,” they write: “We believe that there is a new American craft movement in hyper-contemporary art.”

The manifesto continues, “The distinction between what has occurred previously versus now is the combination of late-stage capitalism, abundant internet usage, complete globalization, and digital archive accessibility. Culturally, there is an emphasis on individuality in conflicting tandem with mass-production and the search for “one of a kind” objects while impersonal plasticity rules over the maker.  We are divided from our things while being collectors of masses.”

It was my pleasure to sit down for a zoom interview with all three of them and we talked about Craftwerk, print in this digital age, and whether they are out of their minds doing this.

What follows is the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Chloe Harthan, Eli Clayton, and Ayla Hayes, founders and creators of Craftwerk.  But first the soundbites:

On starting a new print magazine: Yeah, probably so. We, since we’re all artists, do a lot of things that are difficult to start, and we see it through anyways. I think that’s kind of in all our natures.

On why Craftwerk with an E and not an A: “In switching the E instead of an O, it’s pop-cultural and very in tune with queer culture to change “work” to being that. It’s also the German ending to change to “werk.”

On trying to create a new manifesto on crafts: “It would be cool if people read it and identified with it. But it isn’t really a specific agenda, I would say, for future generations. I think it’s responding to the people that we’re around and the community that we’re in in Chicago.”

On why Chicago and why crafts magazine: “We talked about Chicago in the manifesto being in the center geographically. And then craft is also in a center of an arts practice. There’s craft as in little, tiny projects like knitting, or there’s craft on the total other end, like Renaissance craft. So contemporary craft is in the middle.”

On the Craftwerk team: “Eli and I are the creators; Ayla is the editor. And so, Eli and I first had the idea for a project with jeans, and that was our passion. But before doing that, we wanted to decide what we were doing entirely. That’s why we did the manifesto.”

 On Craftwerk audience: “A lot of artists, creatives, people in our network or in people we know network. Since it is such a small starting project, it’s really all about connecting and getting people to learn about it through other people.”

And now for the lightly edited interview with Chloe Harthan, Eli Clayton, and Ayla Hayes, founders and creators of Craftwerk. 

Samir Husni: For a group of young folks like you, are you out of your mind starting a new print magazine?

Chloe: Yeah, probably so. We, since we’re all artists, do a lot of things that are difficult to start, and we see it through anyways. I think that’s kind of in all our natures.

But it’s been a learning process, and we’re continually learning as we’re doing it. It’s been very fun thus far.

Samir Husni: Why did you decide on craft and Craftwerk spelled with an E instead of an O?

Chloe: All of us being in art school, we saw a trend happening of people returning to craft and the importance of craft in their work. A lot of different things, like fibers work or really anything that is displayed in the manifesto, we saw becoming more popular. And so, we wanted to investigate that and highlight younger artists that were also investigating it.

In switching the E instead of an O, it’s pop-cultural and very in tune with queer culture to change “work” to being that. It’s also the German ending to change to “werk.” But it’s not just about changing the word but contextualizing where we’re thinking of. So, if we changed it and it was just Kraftwerk as in the German spelling, that wouldn’t be accurate to what we’re doing.

“Craft” and then “werk” puts in all the different parts of coming from queer culture, coming from an internet culture, being younger. That’s why we changed that.

Samir Husni: As you look at the first two issues, you had the manifesto in the first issue, then you had the jeans issue. What’s behind the theme? Are you like trying to put a new manifesto on crafts for the future generation?

Eli: It would be cool if people read it and identified with it. But it isn’t really a specific agenda, I would say, for future generations. I think it’s responding to the people that we’re around and the community that we’re in in Chicago. I think being in Chicago is a unique place.

Chloe: We talked about Chicago in the manifesto being in the center geographically. And then craft is also in a center of an arts practice. There’s craft as in little, tiny projects like knitting, or there’s craft on the total other end, like Renaissance craft. So contemporary craft is in the middle.

In the manifesto, we were really trying to get our bearings. In the first one, we were working hard to figure out what we wanted to do. It’s more of a guideline for us, because we started with jeans. Eli and I are the creators, Ayla is the editor. And so, Eli and I first had the idea for a project with jeans, and that was our passion. But before doing that, we wanted to decide what we were doing entirely. That’s why we did the manifesto.

Samir Husni: And why print in this digital age? Why ink on paper?

Ayla:  I’ve always been really drawn to analog ways of making.

I like analog in terms of music, and when I’m looking for reading. And there’s such a power to being able to print things yourself. There’s a whole culture of zines, and magazines, and artists making that.

It’s a very countercultural medium, to be able to do it as an individual, to take on something that seems so daunting, like making a magazine. Yeah, I think that’s why we print. And there’s something so great about having a physical object, too.

I think as makers, it really lends to craft, using physical medium. If it was digital, I just don’t think it would feel as tangible as us as artists and makers.

Samir Husni: And how easy has it been? Is it a walk in the rose garden, or have there been some obstacles?

Chloe:  Not easy at all.

We’re getting better. Eli and I started with the Manifesto, and Ayla informally edited that one by just looking for grammatical errors and small formatting errors. The second one, we brought Ayla on fully to do editing for the whole process. And we figured out, being such a tiny team, how long it takes us to do it, what our goals are visually and physically. Of course, you can see we changed our binding, going from the first one to the second one.

We changed where we got them printed at. We might even change where we get them printed again. Being able to go from one to the other and have the physical version has really been helpful for making it better. And if we didn’t print it, going back to your previous question, I don’t even know how our formatting would look because it’s so different. But it’s a challenge.

Even though it’s more work, there is so much fun stuff to get to change with printing. Even just what type of paper you use is another aspect of it to have fun with. It lends to the theme.

Samir Husni: And who’s the audience?

Ayla: Going back to it not being a walk in the rose garden, we’re all so busy with other things. This is for all of us a side project that is more out of a passion and less from a business or financial standpoint.

It’s a break-even project. That both puts pressure on it but also relieves some pressure in a sense.

But it was a lot of learning, and it was not easy. Still isn’t easy. Still a lot like learning a lot, but for me, it’s worth it at least.

Samir Husni: And who’s your audience?

Eli: I don’t know. I’ll be frank. Anyone that sees it and is interested in picking it up. Mainly right now it’s Chicago based.

A lot of artists, creatives, people in our network or in people we know network. Since it is such a small starting project, it’s really all about connecting and getting people to learn about it through other people.

Chloe: I don’t think it’s a specific group of people. Part of why we’re able to have flexibility within our audience is because we get all the artwork through an open call. We release it online and ask artists to respond to the theme.

For the denim theme, it was much more specific, but through open calls we get lots of eyes on it. People have a free ability to participate in something that will be printed, which is something that many artists are interested in. And then it blooms from that because each person has people that they want to share it with.

That also changes the way that it looks. It’s unpredictable when we put out the open call, but it makes all the work accessible. Everything is different in the denim issue even though it’s based on one thing. All of the pieces have something unique about them that caters to people’s individual interests. So, if you enjoy looking at art, you know, there’s something for everybody, which I like.

Samir Husni: Looking forward, what will be the theme of issue three?

Chloe: We haven’t decided. We have some ideas that we’ve kind of thrown around. We haven’t landed on one specifically.

We all have such different tastes. So, it makes it hard to pick a theme too. But that tension between the things that we all like, whenever it coalesces into something, it’s something that’s able to be responded to by many people, which is great.

Samir Husni: So, you and I are having this conversation a year from now. What would you tell me you’ve accomplished in 2025? Do you want to do another edition by the end of this year?

Chloe: By a year from now, we’ll have another edition, I think.

Eli: Since the second one was put out in 2025, the third might not be put out by the end of 2025. No, it’ll be 2026.

I think it’d be cool to investigate local printing, and being able to be more involved in that process would be cool.

Chloe: Doing something with inserts, just a little texture in the magazine would be something I’m interested in. We’ve talked about having takeaways on the inside, things that are practical, like instructions to make something. We were talking about having instructions on how to mend jeans but didn’t end up having time to do that in this one. Having something that you can use instead of just going through it and reading, something that can impact day-to-day life would be interesting. We’d like to be selling it at local shops and magazine stands, or even non-local places.

Ayla: I’d like to do something that’s more involved and less of us-specific but revolving around the theme instead of just releasing the magazine. That could be much more involved within the community as well.

Samir Husni: So, tell me, how far are you in school?

Chloe: Ayla and I graduated. We both recently graduated this past fall.

Eli: I have two weeks left, and then I’m also graduating from The School of the Art Institute.

Samir Husni: My typical last two questions are, one, what do you do to unwind at the end of the day?

Chloe:  That’s a good question. I don’t know if I do unwind. Right now, I can’t afford to unwind.

While we were working on the magazine, I was doing a lot of the editing in very, very late hours of the night because that was when I had the time to work. When I was unwinding at that time, I was shutting my laptop computer when I was done, opening my window because it was the winter, so super cold air would come in.

Things that weren’t screens was good for me, like doing my laundry. Random things that weren’t related to looking at or typing on something. I recently have done lots of gardening on my patio, and that has been nice. Yeah, I think when working on digital projects like this, once you’re doing such small changes, you must just change environment.

Ayla: I tend to just go outside or read.

But reading is hard because your kind of reading when you’re doing this. So, it’s like, what reading is fun reading and what reading is like, working. Painting helps. I’m a painter.

Chloe: I am also a painter.

With that, I can shut my brain off in a different way and activate different parts. So, I think the painting really helps me too. While I was working on this, I wasn’t painting much. And then I was able to dive back into that, which was like an explosion of reward at the end to just be able to paint again.

Eli: I would say for me, that would be sewing. I do a lot of hand sewing and machine sewing.

And it can be such a tedious, monotonous task that I’m able to just kind of let go. I unwind by doing something physical, which I think kind of circles back to the importance of craft that we were exploring.

Ayla: I listen to music a lot at home. My roommate and I have a turntable. We like to sit and do that a lot.

Samir Husni: My last question is what keeps you up at night?

Chloe: Well, here we’re in an art space. Ayla and I run this space. It’s a small art gallery and we do a handful of events also. This place keeps me up at night and is another huge thing that we’ve bitten off together. But planning for shows and thinking about the future, thinking about our space and where we want to go and what our goals are. That keeps the gears turning for sure.

Eli: The future. The unknown of the future.

Samir Husni: Well, is there any question that I should have asked you? I didn’t ask you…

Samir Husni: What are your magazine inspirations?

Ayla: Recently, over the past summer, I took a class on artist books. And taking that was really, really inspiring to get involved in making books in some way. The school has a great resource, a library of artist books. They bend and twist the medium of a book so much.

It’s so inspiring. That made me want to get into it. And I’ve always liked magazines – like fashion and skateboarding magazines, all that kind of stuff. I think they are so fun.

Eli: Also took that artist books class. And so that was interesting to me. It is the main reason why I have an interest in print and publishing. Books, magazines, stuff like that. My grandma was a librarian, so I would always learn from the things that she got from being a librarian. I feel that also made me interested in print and publishing.

Chloe: I’m very unfamiliar with print media, so I learn from these two all the time. Especially in digital design, I learn from Ayla. She spits out so many examples of magazines to look at because she’s so in touch with it.

And then Eli, he is a printmaker. Eli knows how to do the different types of binding. When we were physically making the first edition, we were going over the most cost-effective options. We were looking at paperweights. We were looking at the finishes. Eli knows so much more about that than I do. So, I think my answer is them because I’m less familiar.

Samir Husni: Thank you and best of luck on your venture.

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but in the case of Envoy magazine, you easily can.  One of the smartest covers that I have seen in a long time, Envoy magazine’s first issue cover tells it all.  “What we don’t know is blurry for all of us…” says the major cover line that is accompanied by a blurry picture of a dove.  Once you open the cover a stunning and clear picture of the dove welcomes you to the inside of the magazine and the back of the cover declares, “…everything becomes clearer as we learn.”

The brainchild of Razi Canikligil and a group of United Nations based journalists, Envoy magazine was launched in the Spring of 2024. In the first issue Mr. Canikligil writes, “Enovy is more than just a publication; it is a platform for dialogue, engagement, and advocacy.  Through our pages, we seek to illuminate the vital work of the United Nations and its agencies, shedding light on the efforts to address climate change, promote peace and security, and advance sustainable development goals.”

Envoy is published by UNEMAG,  a non-profit 501 (C)  (3) organization and is headquartered in the United Nations in New York City. Razi Canikligil is the founder and president of the organization and is the managing editor of Envoy magazine.

I had the pleasure to interview Mr. Canikligil and to talk about the birth of a new magazine celebrating its first anniversary this Spring.  The conversation was as lovely and intriguing as the magazine itself.  So without any further ado, please enjoy this lively conversation with Razi Canikligil, managing editor, Envoy magazine:

But first the soundbites…

On why Envoy magazine:  “To give opportunity to NGOs to be seen. Give opportunity to UN reports to be published in detail in a magazine. And not just UN, also international affairs, but mostly related to UN issues.”

On the mission of the magazine: “We are creating a new style of current affairs magazine. I might say it’s like a mix of current Foreign Affairs and National Geographic magazines.”

On the magazine’s drive: “We are trying to put the good things happening, positive things, like when we cover the oceans or climate change. We are focusing on the things and process, things that are trying to be done, focus on this, in a positive mode.”

On the current status of the magazine: “We are selling good now. And the ads started to come in. We are happy, very excited.”

On what if Envoy became a huge success: “If we are really doing good, then we will sponsor and support the journalist. We will help, we will give fellowships, we will send reporters to cover all the international issues around the world.”

On what keeps him up at night: “When we start preparing the pages, I’m nervous. I focus on every detail. And sometimes we can’t decide how to cover one issue or what to put on the cover.”

And now for the lightly edited conversation with Razi Canikligil, managing editor, Envoy magazine:

Samir Husni:  Why Envoy?

Razi Canikligil: Let me tell you briefly, we are a group of journalists at the United Nations headquarters in New York. And we thought that we should create a non-profit organization and publish a magazine.

The reason behind this is we used to have almost 600 journalists covering the United Nations, UN correspondents. Now they are down to 200. The reason behind this is big media corporations, they can’t support correspondents anymore, they can’t pay in full.

They rather like to work on a freelance basis. CNN just retired its correspondent and CBS did the same. The New York Times shut down its office at the UN.

Voice of America recently shut down its operations. And big newspapers, from the British, The Times, and The Guardian, to Turkey’s Hürriyet newspaper or the French Le Monde, they don’t have full-time reporters at the UN anymore. Most of our colleagues are laid off and they are having trouble finding a job.

They are freelancers now and their income is low. The UN is now mostly one person wire news agencies, most of the time. They can’t cover the UN fully. UN is not just Security Council. UN has a lot of other stuff. There is a lot of stuff happening at the UN. There are many agencies. There are 11,000 NGOs, registered NGOs to the UN. They come and do some events at the UN. But nobody is covering them. They want the coverage. But the few remaining journalists don’t have time.

We don’t have manpower. As individual journalists, most of us, cover the Security Council meetings. But the UN has provided a lot of content. They release reports every day on every agenda.

So we thought, why don’t we create this foundation and publish a magazine and a website so we can create a new platform for the resident journalists. They can have new income, and they can cover the UN in detail.

Most issues we cover only up to 300 words or 500 words, like a short article. We thought that we should go in-depth. We should cover deep interviews, deep analysis of these reports. And NGOs.

So that’s what we do now.

Samir Husni: And is that the reason you decided on an ink on paper magazine? To provide that in-depth coverage? In-depth coverage of the UN…

Razi Canikligil: … And give opportunity to NGOs to be seen. Give opportunity to UN reports to be published in detail in a magazine. And not just UN, also international affairs, but mostly related to UN issues.

From climate change, sustainable development goals, diplomacy, human rights, the oceans, AI, immigration, those things. And we also give a new platform to the young journalists. Because when I go to the bookstores to see the magazines, to check the magazines and Barnes & Noble or Hudson News, I see beautiful interior decoration magazines, beautiful women’s magazines, health or car, the garden magazines.

But when I look at the current affairs section, they are almost the same we’ve seen past 50 years. Same magazines. They are afraid to change their style, their coverage, because they have existing readers.

They don’t want to lose them, so they want to do something new, but they are afraid that they don’t want to lose their current readers. But we said, okay, we are beginning, we are new, so we can start new. But most of our colleagues are well-experienced journalists.

We thought that we should mix it with the young journalists. We give chance to all the young journalists coming in from Columbia University, from journalism schools, or international affairs schools, from around the country and the world, not necessarily from New York city only. They contribute, they write for us, and we will give fellowships to these people.

We’re going to mix the real professional journalists and the young journalists. We are creating a new style of current affairs magazine. I might say it’s like a mix of current Foreign Affairs and National Geographic magazines.

There’s a lot of pictures, data, graphics, and maps, along with long articles. It’s very well done.

Samir Husni: Tell me, you just published Issue 4.  Has your journey with Envoy, since you were the founding publisher and the one that came up with this idea, has your journey with Envoy been a trip in a rose garden, or you had quite a few stumbling blocks, and how did you overcome them?

Razi Canikligil: It was difficult. The reason is that: most people were asking, who’s behind this? Who’s paying for this?  The permanent missions of countries and the UN agencies, wanted to see what you publish, and see what you do.

At the beginning, they were shy to give us interviews. We told them, look, we are not politicized, we are focused on the positive things, good things happening. We are not looking to expose things.

We are trying to put the good things happening, positive things, like when we cover the oceans or climate change. We are focusing on the things and process, things that are trying to be done, focus on this, in a positive mode. We needed to get, of course, donations from NGOs and foundations, and they were shy at the beginning.

But now, the donations are coming in. Ads are coming in. We didn’t have any database, any profile or a media kit.  We created the first issue, and we thought that we should just give it away for free. We gave the first issue of the magazine to the UN missions, the NGOs, and the delegates at the United Nations. We printed 5,000 copies and the people loved the magazine so much.

They said, why don’t you just sell this magazine, try to distribute. And we said, okay, let’s try. Many people turned us down.

But one big national distributor, Disticor, said they loved the magazine, they want to distribute it, and they talked with Barnes & Noble. Barnes & Noble loved the magazine, and they started selling it all across the country, and Canadians loved it. So we started distributing in Chapters and in Nego in Canada.

They loved it. And then the third issue came, and Hudson News started distributing it. Hudson News is a big one, because Hudson News, has the train stations and airports.

They are a big seller, and they love the magazine. They distributed the third and fourth issues of our magazine. They placed it as a hot read among all the other magazines.

We are selling good now. And the ads started to come in. We are happy, very excited.

Last night we celebrated our first anniversary, with the fourth issue release. It was good.

More journalists will contribute to us, not just from the UN. We are open to all the freelance journalists around the world, also young journalists who are passionate about our issues. They give us ideas, they send us some pictures, they think they can write about this, and we talk with them. And we give them a chance.

So far, we are happy with the results.

Samir Husni: Excellent. If you and I are having this conversation a year from now, as you celebrate your second anniversary, what can you tell me you’ve accomplished in 2025?

Razi Canikligil: We started subscription now, we started taking subscriptions.

We want to reach out to a high number of subscribers. It’s a challenge for us because we don’t know how to publish, we don’t know how to market. We are all journalists.

We never published a magazine before, but we are getting a lot of help. We are all investigators, we understand, we talk, we learn.

Another issue is half of our journalists corresponds at UN are TV reporters, broadcasters. We should have a YouTube channel on the web for webcasts, Podcasts, etc. I think we’re going to start this because many of our journalists are having difficulty because they don’t write, they just do TV stuff. More TV, the webcasts will be available, I think, next year when we talk.

Also, next year, the next summer issue will be distributed in Europe.

We have a great distributor in London. They will put us in London, Geneva, Brussels, and Vienna. And then hopefully by fall, we’ll go to other capitals in Europe, Paris, and Istanbul and other places.

Then maybe next year we’ll be in Asia. Envoy is not an American magazine; it’s an international global magazine.

Samir Husni: So, Razi, tell me, is there any question I should ask you I did not ask you?

Razi Canikligil: Well, what happens if this magazine becomes big and you guys make enough money?

If we are really doing good, then we will sponsor and support the journalist. We will help, we will give fellowships, we will send reporters to cover all the international issues around the world. We will have a powerful group to support journalists around the world to have really excellent coverage. Expert journalists, experts diplomats, and UN people.

We don’t go into the country’s political issues. We are just going into how it affects all the other countries.

If something is happening in America or other countries, how it affects, side effects.

Samir Husni: My typical last two questions that I ask always in my interviews. If I come to your home unannounced one evening, what do I catch Razi doing to unwind from a busy day? Reading a book, watching TV?

Razi Canikligil: Trying to sleep. I go to bed early and get up like 5 a.m. in the morning because the time difference. I don’t have much of an evening. I go to bed 9 p.m. and get up like 5 or 4:30 a.m. in the morning. Do a lot of reading about publishing, marketing, it’s a new field for us. We are learning about AI. How can we use AI to help us or how can we teach AI to our colleagues? Because everything is expensive in the publishing. And we are trying to find out ways. This magazine really doesn’t cost that much.

Samir Husni: And what keeps you up at night these days?

Razi Canikligil: When we start preparing the pages, I’m nervous. I focus on every detail. And sometimes we can’t decide how to cover one issue or what to put on the cover.

Of the magazine, I get stressed out. They prepare a lot of graphics for us, a lot of alternatives. It’s hard. And I think the cover, it’s hard to choose the cover. We have a lot of ideas, and we get conflict among us which cover should be best for the magazine. At the end, I make the final decision.

That’s very difficult for me. But I think this fourth cover, this new cover, I think we all like it. We were on the same page with this cover.

We had confusion with other covers in the past. But this cover, everybody loved it. Nobody had any other idea, had other options, everyone loved this cover.

So that’s a first. Because the cover tells the reader who we are.

We are a new magazine.

It’s important, especially in the first couple of years. It was a little bit political cover also. It gave us some stress, but so far everybody loved it.

Samir Husni: Thank you very much and congratulations on your first anniversary.